Checks and balances: As well as reluctantly agreeing that communism
was a god that failed, historian Eric
Hobsbawm tells Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman that any world empire runs the risk
of overreaching itself:
'For the last 50 years - and it's lucky for you and for me and for all
of us that this was so - there were two world empires that kept the position
in check.
'One of them was a more agreeable one that one would prefer to live under;
the other was less agreeable. But nevertheless both had the function of keeping
each other in check.
'One of them has disappeared and the net effect of this, I think, is a certain
degree of the occupational disease of, you might say, world conquerors, particularly
people that feel their military power is unlimited: megalomania.
'I think there needs to be a learning curve because there are even in the
United States a lot of people, even among the officials of the United States,
who believe that world empires live in the real world and the real world
is a bit too big and a bit too complicated to be run singlehanded from Washington.'
[Newsnight
video].
